"Coil" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "boomer" that a Cingalese mouse-deer does to an elk, was once given to me as a pet, and we became great friends. Whenever I went into the room and opened my shirt or coat, the little fellow would bound in and coil himself snugly away for hours, if permitted; thus showing, I think that he still retained a recollection of the snug abode of his childhood. Like most pets, he came to an untimely end—in fact, met with the ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... likeness. None, except where the golden mist comes and transfigures them into one glory. For the rest, the mountain there wrapt in the chestnut forest is not like that bare peak which tilts against the sky—nor like the serpent-twine of another which seems to move and coil in the moving coiling shadow. . ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... where it was, but I think it must have been the garret of some tavern where they play dice. After midnight I heard a great commotion below me, and presently Aristarchi appeared at the window with a rope. He always seems to have a coil of rope within reach! He tied me to him—it was like being tied to a wild horse—and he got us safely down from the window to the boat again, and the mate was in it, and they took me to the ship faster than I was ever rowed in my life. You know ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... profile outline. The head itself was nobly rounded, and sternly classic as any well authenticated antique, but it was no marvel that it habitually bowed under the heavy glittering mass of silver hair, which wound in coil after coil and was secured at the back by a comb of carved jet, thickly studded with small silver stars. The extraordinary lustrousness of these waves of gray hair that rippled on her forehead and temples like molten metal, lent ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... your gold rings and your amber rings, and you will be more beautiful Than the brown girls of poets and the milk-white wives of kings. The coil of your hair is like a hangman's rope; But press me to your green collar between ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... was curled and frizzed high on her forehead, and confined by narrow bands of red velvet; her back hair was rolled in an immense coil, and held by a ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... to the upper set of Jurassic beds, there is only one type of Ammonite; but in the Cretaceous beds, immediately above it, there set in a number of different genera and distinct species, including the most fantastic and seemingly abnormal forms. It is as if the close coil by which these shells had been characterized during the Middle Age had been suddenly broken up and decomposed into an endless variety of outlines. Some of these new types still retain the coil, but the whorls are much less compact than ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... consists of a Bunsen pile worked with bichromate of potash, which makes no smell; an induction coil carries the electricity generated by the pile into communication with a lantern of peculiar construction; in this lantern there is a spiral glass tube from which the air has been excluded, and in which remains only a residuum of carbonic acid gas or of nitrogen. When ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... wire. The coil of wire now passes into the hands of a woman, assisted by a boy or girl. A few nails, or iron pins, not quite in a line, are fixed into one end of a wooden table about twenty feet in length; the end of the wire is passed alternately between these nails, and ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... fact, of two other characters—recur to our reflections as we find that we have shuffled off the coil of bricks and mortar and are rattling across Wormwood Scrubs. More fortunate than some who have been there before us, we have no call to alight. Calls to this ancient field of glory, whether symbolized by the gentlemanly pistol or the plebeian fist, have ceased to be in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... nearly a week. He had told the landlord that he was going to Switzerland, but that he liked roundabout ways, and was loitering along the road, as the season was not yet far enough advanced for a certain ascent which he meditated. He had nothing with him but a knapsack, a coil of rope, and a weather-beaten ice-axe, besides one small book, which he read whenever he read at all. He spoke German fluently, but said he was an American. Thereupon the landlady, who had a cousin who had a nephew who had gone to Brazil, asked the tourist if he did not know August Buergin, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... in the empty, echoing space of the hangar level. The fuel tanks bulged huge in the dimness. Here were reels of the feed hose he needed—flexible metal that had withstood the years; here a faucet nozzle, and a long coil of fine wire. Haste driving him, he made the connections. Then he was descending again, dragging behind him a long black snake of hose whose other end was clamped to a vat of oxygen ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... mechanical energy into electrical energy. The modern dynamo, as Professor Soddy puts it, may be looked upon as an electron pump. We cannot go into the subject deeply here, we would only say that a large coil of copper wire is caused to turn round rapidly between the poles of a powerful magnet. That is the essential construction of the "dynamo," which is used for generating strong currents. We shall see in a moment how magnetism ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... den—as Charron always called it—he caught up his packet, and took a lantern, and a coil of tow which had been prepared, and strode forth for the last time into the sloping court behind the walls. Passing towards the eastern vaults, he saw the form of some one by the broken dial, above the hedge of brambles, which had once been of roses and sweetbriar. "Oh, that woman! ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... likes to wait till it does (which will be at twelve o'clock punctually), is very welcome to do so. The "Heroes of Waterloo," Wellington and Blucher, No. 7, are represented by a couple of boots known by those distinguished names. 8, "True to the Core," is a rosy-cheeked apple. 9 is a coil of watch spring. 10, "Tears, Idle Tears," on which the exhibitor feelingly expatiates as a noble example of the imaginative in art, is an onion. The space dedicated to No. 11 is occupied by the numbered ticket only, the exhibitor explaining ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... her knees in prayer, an angel came,[132] and bade her rise. "Eve, arise from thy penance," he commanded. "Behold, thy husband hath left his mortal coil. Arise, and see his spirit go up to his Creator, to appear before Him." And, lo, she beheld a chariot of light, drawn by four shining eagles, and preceded by angels. In this chariot lay the soul of Adam, which the angels were taking to heaven. Arrived there, they burnt incense until the ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... a young girl of fifteen, tall and trim in figure, sat her horse with the easy grace of a practised and confident rider. Her long velvet habit was deeply edged with fur, and both kirtle and head-gear were of a rich purple tinge, while from beneath the latter just peeped a heavy coil of sunny, golden hair. Her face was fresh and fair, as should be that of any young girl of fifteen, but its expression was rather that of high spirits and of heedless and impetuous moods than of simple ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... I sailed as freighter and trader principally to China, Australia, and Japan, and among the Spice Islands. Mine was not the sort of life to make one long to coil up one's ropes on land, the customs and ways of which I had finally almost forgotten. And so when times for freighters got bad, as at last they did, and I tried to quit the sea, what was there for an old sailor to do? I was born in the breezes, and I had studied ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... of the thing was that it was frequently being lost. Suspecting herself, maybe, as an unpractical dreamer in a world filled with robbers, she would cart it about with her for safety, sit down behind a coil of rope and fall into a fit of abstraction; be recalled to life by the evolutions of the crew reefing or furling or what not, rise to superintend the operations—and then suddenly find she had lost ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the example of "the two Pols" was due solely to her own unawakened temperament. Life had no gloss for her, and it had no poetic appeal. She supposed, when she considered the matter at all, that sometime as a woman she would be submitted to the coil of passion and sex, like all the others about whom her friends talked incessantly. They seemed to regard every man as a possible source of excitement to a woman. But she resolved for her part to put off the interference of this ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... The moment his eye fell upon this jet black braid he was delighted. "This will do," he said; and he immediately began to run it back and forth through his hands as swiftly as he could; and as he drew it forth, he tried its strength. He said again, "this will do;" and winding it in a glossy coil about his shoulders, he set out a little after midnight. His object was to catch the sun before he rose. He fixed his snare firmly on a spot just where the sun must strike the land as it rose above the earth; and sure enough, he ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... darkness. Bennington began to feel impressed in earnest. Across his mind crept doubts as to the outcome. He almost screamed aloud as some one stole up behind and dropped over his throat the soft cold coil of a lariat. Then, at a signal from the chief, the two men haled ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the boat on this side. I could follow them no farther; the woods hid them; but they have gone downstream to that bend in the road. Hugon had his hunting-knife and pistols; the schoolmaster carried a coil of rope." She flung back her head, and her hands went to her throat as though she were stifling. "The turn in the road is very sharp. Just past the bend they will stretch the rope from side to side, fastening it to two trees. He will be hurrying home before the bursting of the ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... Slowly the head of the log turned outward from its circling fellows, quivered for a moment in the cleft, then shot smoothly forth into the sluice. With a groan Henderson came to his senses, starting up and catching instinctively at the butt of the heavy Colt in his belt. At the same instant the coil of a rope settled over his shoulders, pinioning his arms to his sides, and he was jerked backwards with a violence that fairly lifted him over the projecting root of the birch. As he fell his head struck a stump; ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... far off. It was not long before three or four men came through the gathering dusk, and one had a coil of rope over his shoulder. And after them came across the hillside a horseman, beside whom ran a man on foot. There were many men about, and these were too far for me to heed them. I only noticed that ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... grandeur created with a bit of pitch pine just before arriving at a town; the crew are grouped on the forecastle; the broad stage is run far out over the port bow, and an envied deckhand stands picturesquely on the end of it with a coil of rope in his hand; the pent steam is screaming through the gauge- cocks, the captain lifts his hand, a bell rings, the wheels stop; then they turn back, churning the water to foam, and the steamer is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that neither law nor guile could overcome Robin Hood, he was much perplexed, and said to himself, "Fool that I am! Had I not told our King of Robin Hood, I would not have gotten myself into such a coil; but now I must either take him captive or have wrath visited upon my head from his most gracious Majesty. I have tried law, and I have tried guile, and I have failed in both; so I will try what ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... a peep at what science tells us about energy: Newton says energy is never extinguished. When it ceases in one form, it changes to another. What happens when you run electricity through a resistance coil?" ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... coil of new rope, I hauled it on deck, and soon made fast my little boat to the ship. Then I made a hasty rope ladder which I threw over, and Mrs Reichardt was in a very few minutes standing by my side. Her knowledge was necessary to inform me of the ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... waddling into the airlock with the coil of space rope over one vacuum-suited arm. The inner lock door closed behind him. A little later Maril heard the ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... she stared at him as if she did not understand. Then she paled until her face became as white as the nun's coil upon her brow; her breath came in a faint moan, she stiffened, and swayed upon her feet, and caught at the back of a prie-dieu to steady and save herself from falling. He saw that he had blundered by his abruptness, that he had failed to gauge the full depth of her feelings for the Hidden Prince, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... inch thick, spread with butter, fold in 3 layers, cut off strips 1 inch wide, twist and coil. When baked spread with ...
— For Luncheon and Supper Guests • Alice Bradley
... minutes, with never a glance at the book, King paid out the glorious hexameters (and King could read Latin as though it were alive), Winton hauling them in and coiling them away behind him as trimmers in a telegraph-ship's hold coil away deep-sea cable. King broke from the Aeneid to the Georgics and back again, pausing now and then to translate some specially loved line or to dwell on the treble-shot texture of the ancient fabric. He did not allude ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... a knife into equal portions; and, having floured your hands, roll it out on the paste-board into long even strips. Place them in shallow tin pans, that have been buttered; either laying the strips side by side in straight round sticks, (uniting them at both ends,) or coil them into rings one within another, as you see them at the cake shops. Bake them in a brisk oven, taking care that they do not burn; gingerbread scorching ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... dispensation of Providence; while the fellows who really know never come back to tell. If merely one is desired, a well-directed shot from out a cedar thicket affords a most gentlemanly way of shuffling off this mortal coil." ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... with the King's Order for 'em, and Master Collins casts them in his foundry. If he chooses to bring them up from Nether Forge and lay 'em out in the church tower, why they are e'en so much the nearer to the main road and you are saved a day's hauling. What a coil to make of a mere ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... wound the coil of russet hair round her shapely head. "He will think whatever you do charming, and whatever you say brilliant," she said; "that is the advantage in ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Vogt's gun was supposed to be broken. In a second he had put on the spare iron bands that should in reality be fixed with nails, and then he wound coil after coil of stout rope round the join, till the pole was as if held in a strong web of cordage, and would be more likely to break in a new place than to give way again where ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... uncertainty he waited, hoping that the trapper might come soon; and by way of practice for the serious enterprise that would come later, as well as to direct the prisoner's mind a little from his painful predicament, Kane began trying to lasso him with a coil of ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... coil to the affair, not generally recognized in America. Austria in striking at Serbia was potentially aiming at a closer envelopment of Italy along the Adriatic, provision for which had been made in a special article of the Triple Alliance,—the seventh,—under which she had bound herself to grant ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... a coil of rope brought from the Golden Eagle for the purpose of lowering one of their number over the edge of the gulf onto the Viking ship—if the mast they had seen proved to ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... no other than an old she 'possum), now turned upon her tail; and, seizing the head of the hare in her hog-like jaws, killed it at a single "cranch." She then released it from the coil; and, laying it out upon the grass, would have made a meal of it then and there, had she been permitted to do so. But that ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... among the blossoms and leaves there flashed and sparkled a glittering dew of diamonds, lightly fastened on delicate silver wires. Next came a bunch of flowers, round whose stems a supple golden snake was twined, covered with rubies and diamonds and destined to coil itself round a woman's arm. The third was a necklace of extremely costly Persian pearls, which had once belonged—so the merchant ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... even when he had no spectator, not even a looking-glass;) besides ejaculations of "It cannot be!" "If it were!" "I trust not!" "A fresh ghost to torment me!" "When will come the end of this accursed coil which I have wound round my life?" and so forth, he decided aloud that the suspense was intolerable; and enclosing himself in his poetical cloak and Mazzini wide-awake, strode down to the town, and into the shop. And as he entered it, "his heart sank to his midriff, and ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of course, exactly what no one had the right to ask of her: if indeed the word "right", could be used in any conceivable relation to this coil of wrongs. But the fact remained that, in the way of kindness, she did owe much to Ellie; and that this was the first payment her friend had ever exacted. She found herself, in fact, in exactly the same ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... directly for the tree on which hung the nest.' The birds seemed to think he meant to climb to their nest, and descended in rage and terror to the lower branches. 'The snake, seeing them approach almost within range of his hideous maw, gathered himself into a coil, and prepared to strike. His eyes scintillated like sparks of fire, and seemed to fascinate the birds; for instead of retiring, they each moment drew nearer and nearer, now alighting on the ground, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... she had gone away in search of some plant, or plants, with which to compound the medicine she was making for me. She returned early in the forenoon, carrying a small basket in which I saw a coil of the long creeping vine called 'At 'At by the natives, and which grows only on the sandiest and most ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... catching up snatches of my own melody, sometimes waving aloft or pressing to her bosom the red kerchief or mucadore she had worn knotted in her hair, which, now unloosened, twined about her ivory-like neck and shoulders in a serpentine coil. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... hand to "shut the lions' mouths." In the hour of bereavement they are employed bringing messages of solace from the Intercessor within the veil, and enabling us to "glorify God in the fires." In the hour of death they are waiting to lend their wings to the Immortal tenant as it bursts its earthly coil. Oh, if the return of the Repentant Sinner be to them an hour of joyous jubilee;—if their songs of triumph greet the Believer justified;—what must it be to exult over the gladsome consummation—the Believer glorified; to be engaged on the Great Day as Reapers at the ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... to learn their future business; and even at that early age they are occasionally intrusted to bring home a sledge and dogs from a distance of several miles over the ice. At the age of eleven we see a boy with his water-tight boots and moccasins, a spear in his hand, and a small coil of line at his back, accompanying the men to the fishery, under every circumstance; and from this time his services daily increase in value to the whole tribe. On our first intercourse with them we supposed that they would not ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... jumpin', an' fair going mad— What can be done with this wild, wicked lad? Plaguin' t'poor cat till it scratches his hand, Or tolling some door wi' a stone an' a band; Rolling i't' mud as black as a coil, Cheeking his mates wi' a "Ha'penny i't' hoil;" Slashin' an' cuttin' wi' a sword made o' wood, Actin' Dick Turpin or bold Robin Hood— T'warst little imp 'at there is i't' whole street: O! he's a shocker is young ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... what a crowd! How on earth are we ever to get through this coil? They are like ants that no one can measure or number. Many a good deed have you done, Ptolemy; since your father joined the immortals, there's never a malefactor to spoil the passer-by, creeping on him in Egyptian fashion—oh! the tricks those perfect rascals ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... those dismal gulfs, Like fiends that hemm'd him round— I would not lead a diver's life For every pearl that's found. And I've heard how the sea-snake, huge and dark, In the arctic flood doth roll; He hath coil'd his tail, like a cable strong, All round and round the pole: And they say, when he stirs in the sea below, The ice-rocks split asunder— The mountains huge of the ribbed ice— With a deafening crack like thunder. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... seeing the luxury and extravagance which must tempt one to feel hard and bitter, I should fear. We go on quietly and happily. You know our school is large. Thank God, we are all well, save dear old Fisher, who met with a sad boating accident last week. A coil of the boat raft caught his ankle as the strain was suddenly tightened by a rather heavy sea, and literally tore the front part of his foot completely off, besides dislocating and fracturing the ankle-bone. He bears the pain ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... watching he sprang through a hole in the roof, alighting in the fire, from which he walked out gingerly, shaking his feet as if he had just been out in the wet. I shot away every cartridge I had at him, but in the middle of the shooting he would just coil up before the fire ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... native who had been to Magungo to purchase Simbi (the cowrie-shell); he says that a white man formerly arrived there annually, and brought a donkey with him in a boat; that he disembarked his donkey and rode about the country, dealing with the natives, and bartering cowries and brass-coil bracelets. This man had no firearms, but wore a sword. The king of Magungo ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... brought them home to Flint's cabin: a fresh box of candles, which they put in the corner; a tin can of blasting-powder, which they placed upon the candle-box; a keg of blasting-powder, which they placed under Flint's bunk; a huge coil of fuse, which they hung on a peg. Fetlock reasoned that Flint's mining operations had outgrown the pick, and that blasting was about to begin now. He had seen blasting done, and he had a notion of the process, ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... These stations are each provided with a ladder of sufficient length to reach from the pier to the water at low tide, with hooks at one end, by means of which it is attached firmly to the pier; a boat hook fastened to a long pole; a life preserver or float, and a coil of rope. These are merely deposited in a conspicuous place. In case of accident, any one may use them for the purpose of rescuing a person in danger of drowning, but at other times it is punishable by law to interfere with them, or to remove ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... coil the rope, each coil imperceptibly drawing the animal nearer to himself, until it finally stood beside him; then, getting it between him and the ranche, he gradually pulled himself up, and, clinging to its side, by skilful manipulation of the lariat, induced the animal to take an opposite direction ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... tactics. Reversing the coil, he cast the loop over a friendly stump that chanced to be at hand; then, gripping the rope in his hand, he boldly cast himself into the midst of that whirl of froth and ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... half is slough, Half pine-tree forest: maples, scarlet oaks Breed o'er the river-beds; even Mincio chokes With sand the summer through: but 'tis morass In winter up to Mantua's walls. There was, Some thirty years before this evening's coil, One spot reclaimed from the surrounding spoil, Goito; just a castle built amid A few low mountains; firs and larches hid Their main defiles, and rings of vineyard bound The rest. Some captured creature in a pound, Whose artless wonder quite precludes distress, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... called repeatedly for a lynching. He had cut a long new piece of rope from a coil at a store of supplies and was trying to drag ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... fish-line. A short, quick stalk, and the muskrat, still eating a flagroot, was within thirty feet. The fish-line was coiled on the ground and then attached to an arrow, the bow bent—zip—the arrow picked up the line, coil after coil, and trans-fixed the muskrat. Splash! and the animal ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... sirs, this lust for strife? Why, sword in hand, Raise ye this coil about your neighbours' wives? To us Leucippus these his daughters gave, Long ere ye saw them: they are ours on oath. Ye, coveting (to your shame) your neighbour's bed And kine and asses and whatever is his, Suborned the man and stole our wives by bribes. How often spake I thus before your ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... them. And Kai snatched a billet out of the pile. And when she met them she sought to throw her arms about their necks. And Kai placed the log between her two hands, and she squeezed it so that it became a twisted coil. "Oh woman," said Kai, "if thou hadst squeezed me thus, none could ever again have set their affections on me. Evil love were this." They entered into the house, and were served; and soon after they all went forth ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... a coil! He's wounded thee sorely, Dotey! I'm witness that he assaulted thee, with intent to kill like ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to his aid all the years of skill that he had acquired in his life in the wilds. His body was like that of a serpent, going forward, coil by coil. He was near enough now to see the embers of the fire not yet quite dead, the dark figures scattered about it, sleeping upon the grass with the long ease of custom, and then the outline of the woman apart from the others with the children about her. Henry now lay entirely flat, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... my mother, peace! I would that I were low laid in my grave; I am not worth this coil ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... Night! The black astrologer Night! Night is the world!—I shiver with fright:— The air is full of evil things, The coil and glitter of snaky rings, And, the tremor of vast invisible wings, That are not heard but felt: They touch my hair, my hand, my cheek, They mope and mouth, but they never speak To utter their awful history. Oh, when ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... Never again shall the far-shining mountains allure us, No more shall the icy mad torrents appall. Fold up the sling ropes, coil down the cinches, Cache the saddles, and put the brown bridles away. Not one of the roses of Navajo silver, Not even a spur shall we save from the rust. Put away the worn tent-cloth, let the red people have it; We are done with all shelter, we are done with ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... with serpent coil Around my heart its fatal fold; And though my struggling bosom toil, To heave the monster from its hold— It will not from its victim part. By day or night, in down or dell, Where'er I roam, still, still ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... a surplus one which Mrs. Treacher kept in the Barracks kitchen, to wear "against the draughts" on occasions when she helped Archelaus with the cooking.) But most wonderful of all was her hair. By some swift art the heavy coil had been drawn into two flat bands, brought low over the forehead, and carried back over the ears in a fashion almost slatternly. By no art could Vashti conceal that she was beautiful. She was also too wise to attempt it. But, for the rest, she had ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... here an' say nowt abaght it, but aw con just relish one o' thease to my drinkin', an' aw dar say he'll want one, an' awm sure th' childer 'll do wi' a bit. We hav'nt had as mich fleshmait i' awr haase afoor for many a wick. Fotch that gridiron, Polly! We'st ha to do it o'th' top o'th' coil, for ther isn't fat enuff ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... back of the room and brought a long coil of rope. Making a running noose in one end, he released several loops from the big coil and held them ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... and that she should carry the centre of all looks and thoughts with her. She was dressed to please her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the modes declared correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers. Her heavy black hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shot through it like a javelin. Round her neck was a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain, such as the Gauls used to wear: the "Dying Gladiator" has it. Her dress was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... loadstone as first discovered in Magnesia, a town in Asia Minor; also to a piece of iron, nickel, or cobalt having similar properties, notably the power of setting itself in a definite direction; also a coil of wire carrying an electric current, because such a coil really possesses the properties ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... of the coiled rod is shown in Fig. 4. This illustrates how two pins are inserted in holes, drilled at right angles, to hold the coil on the bottom plate. The coiled rod ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... shall be left to the Niblungs if we return no more? Then let the wolves be warders of the Niblungs' gathered store! On the hearth let the worm creep over where the fire now flares aloft! And the adder coil in the chambers where the Niblung wives sleep soft! Let the master of the pine-wood roll huge in the Niblung porch, And the moon through the broken rafters be the Niblungs' ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... were new, for he had assisted in reeving them himself, only the week before. It was owing to this circumstance that they were long enough to reach him; a large allowance for wear and tear having been made in cutting them from the coil. As it was, the ends dropped some twenty feet below the ledge on ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... thatch that formed the roof of their habitation; for their cabin half burrowed in the mountain, and half clung, like a swallow's nest, to the side of the deep declivity that terminated the northern limit of the summit. Had it not been for the windlass of a shaft, a coil of rope, and a few heaps of stone and gravel, which were the only indications of human labor in that stony field, there was nothing to interrupt its monotonous dead level. And, when they descended a dozen well-worn steps to the door of their cabin, they left the summit, as before, lonely, silent, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... stem branched into a most luxuriant variety of forms. The typical form was closely coiled like a nautilus. In others the coil was more or less open, or even erected into a spiral. Some were hook-shaped, and there were members of the order in which the shell was straight, and yet retained all the internal structures of its kind. At the end of the Mesozoic the entire ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... A lad's trick. But I love him the better for it.... True, he's past loving.... And now we must tell our Queen. What a coil at the day's end! She'll grieve for him. Not as I shall; Ferdinand, but as youth for youth. They were much of the same age. Playmate for playmate. See, he wears her colours. That is the knot she gave him last—last.... Oh God! ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the soothing softness of a mother's lullaby to a tired child, and as the liquid notes quavered delicately on the otherwise deep stillness, the formidable reptile began to coil itself ascendingly round and round the ebony rod, . . higher and higher,—one glistening ring after another,—higher still, till its eyes were on a level with the "Eye of Raphon" that flamed on Lysia's breast, . . there ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... welcom: Your son and't please you Sir, is new cashiered yonder, Cast from his Mistris favour: and such a coil there is; Such fending, and such proving; she stands off, And will by no means yield to composition: He offers any ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... thing nearly happened to me," he resumed as they settled themselves against a coil of rope where only the murmur of the washing sea could reach them, "and might have happened to others too. Inmates of that big Krankenhaus were variously affected. My action, tardy I must ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... half-dozen yards from us. Upon the top coil was poised his hideous head; above it vibrated the bony, fleshless vertebrae of the tail. The little schoolmarm stared at the beast, fascinated by fear and horror. Ajax cut a switch from a willow; then ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... reader; but I remember just now a most curious instance, in an archivolt of a house in the Corte del Remer close to the Rialto at Venice. It is composed of a wreath of flower-work—a constant Byzantine design—with an animal in each coil; the whole enclosed between two fillets. Each animal, leaping or eating, scratching or biting, is kept nevertheless strictly within its coil, and between the fillets. Not the shake of an ear, not the tip of a tail, overpasses this appointed line, through a series of some ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... some whispering among members of the crew as they observed Bob strolling about the deck, and one of the men said something to Mr. Carr. The first mate nodded and smiled. A little later, as Bob was watching the men coil up the big hawser which the tug had cast off, the Eagle now proceeding along under her own sails, one of the sailors ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... [enters with a large stone in her arms which she places on the edge. She has the coil of rope thrown over her shoulder. Laughs]. So you haven't gone yet! [Takes the spade and starts to dig.] Don't you think I can do without you now? I will dig a deep, deep hole. Then I'll tie one end of the rope around the stone, and place it into the hole.—Then ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... at a time, and me first." Carson took the part coil of rope from Smoke's hand. "You'll have to cast off. I'll take the rope and the pick. Gimme your hand so I ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... it in a moment," he cried, as a long coil of soft, dark hair appeared, so closely resembling Cecil's own as fully to justify his ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... SPRING.—This is a form of spring for tension purposes. The enlarged cross-section of the coil in its middle portion, with the ends tapering down to the eyes, provides a means whereby the pull is transferred from the smaller to the larger portions, without producing a great breaking strain near ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... world at the Pre Catelan, Maxine and Blake had lengthened the coil of their dream as the day waxed. Three o'clock had seen them driving into the heart of the Bois, and late afternoon had found them wandering under the formal, interlaced trees in the gardens of ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... startled cry of Natalie that roused West, and brought his drooping head, upright. She was sitting up, still held safely by the coil of rope, and pointing excitedly ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... creeper round them. He then fastened his cloth tightly round his loins, and producing another cloth wrapped it around his head, neck, and body, and tied it firmly around his neck, leaving his face, arms, and legs completely bare. Slung to his girdle he carried a long thin coil of cord; and while he had been making these preparations, one of his companions had cut a strong creeper or bush-rope eight or ten yards long, to one end of which the wood-torch was fastened, and lighted at the bottom, emitting a steady stream of smoke. Just ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... provided, placed it in Maurice's hand, and smiled proudly at his pupil's quick "Alla vostra salute!" before tossing it off. Then each one in turn, with an "Alla sua salute!" to Maurice, took a drink from the great, leather bottle; and Nito, shaking out his long coil of net, declared that it was time to get ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... only one at a time, the engineer descended first; and when he had gained the ledge at which he had before halted, the cage rearose for me. I soon gained his side. We had provided ourselves with a strong coil ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... now a bear, And now a coil of hissing snakes; At last a Dragon she became, And furious ...
— The Nightingale, the Valkyrie and Raven - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... the hair, it has become by consent of all an accessory of great importance. Will any one affirm that it is a matter of indifference how the hair is dressed? Whether in plaits or bows? Whether in a crop, or twisted up in a coil? There is nothing which affects a lady's personal appearance more than the style in which she dresses her hair. We confess that we have a strong prejudice against a too submissive following of the fashion. Because in the first place we deny ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... night, Hie away; and aim thy flight Where consort none other fowl Than the bat and sullen owl; Where upon thy limber grass, Poppy and mandragoras, With like simples not a few, Hang forever drops of dew; Where flows Lethe without coil Softly like a stream of oil. Hie thee hither, gentle sleep: With this Greek no longer keep. Thrice I charge thee by my wand, Thrice with moly from my hand Do I touch Ulysses's eyes, And with the jaspis: then ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the church, who was making his rounds and placing fresh candles on the altar, received a shock. The Virgin's diamond was gone! The priests, the bishop, the governor, the general, the police were notified, and there was a mighty coil. What sacrilegious wretch had done this thing? Miguel had been seen to enter the church on the previous night; therefore suspicion attached to him. He was arrested and charged with the crime. To the astonishment of all, he made no secret of it, though he protested against the ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... herself fall on the nearest chair, as if utterly overcome. Her attitude, like certain tones of her voice, had in it something masculine: the knees apart in the ample wrapper, the clasped hands hanging between them, her body leaning forward, with drooping head. I stared at the heavy black coil of twisted hair. It was enormous, crowning the bowed head with a crushing and disdained glory. The escaped wisps hung straight down. And suddenly I perceived that the girl was trembling from head to ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... place, there is almost invariably a fat greasy monk seated in the middle, forming the centre of a sort of coil of human creatures. On one of his knees is some robust rosy-cheeked nurse from Aversa or Nettuno; on the other, a handsome peasant woman from Bauci or Procida. On either side of him, between the wheels and the body of the vehicle, stand the husbands of these two ladies. Standing on tiptoe ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... exertions on the beacon mention has already been made, and who, having in early life been a seaman, was also very expert in the management of a boat. A life-buoy was likewise suspended from the bridge, to which a coil of line two hundred fathoms in length was attached, which could be let out to a person falling into the water, or to the people in the boat, should they not be able to work ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... meditated thus, he perceived that the far off Sierras were forming a background for a sinuous coil of smoke from the cabin. For some time he watched it curling up into the great arch of sky. It was as if he were hypnotised by it and, in a vague, shadowy way, he had a sense of being connected, somehow, with the little cabin and its recluse. Was this feeling that he had ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... began. Farrish and Pete turn by turn flung their lariats at the horse's head and feet, but time after time he dodged, and ducked, and capered away from the whirling noose, or wriggled out of the coil as it ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... this singular disease is a white fiber, which, coming out from the integuments of the muscles of the leg above, hangs suspended in the cavity (ulcer) the lower end loose, and somewhat inclined to coil (and when straightened out, resuming again the serpentine curves, of course from the elasticity with motion), is supposed to be a worm; hence its name—Guinea worm. The fibre seems in color and texture to be in a normal condition; indeed, there appear to be little or ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... most elaborately of a single flattened band of chips, which is rolled up into a coil four layers deep. One side, forming the bottom of the cell, is concave, being beaten down and smoothed off by the bee. The other side of the partition, forming the top of the ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... suddenly by a white flame, whether from the leaping of some inner emotion or from the sinking firelight which blazed up fitfully Miss Saidie could not tell. As she turned her head with an impatient movement her black hair slipped its heavy coil and spread in a shadowy mass upon ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... desire, its aversion, its love, its curiosity, are expressed without modification. The broken prattle, those half-pronounced words, are uttered with clear, ringing tones of sincerity. There is no coil of deceit about the heart. There are no secrets chambered in the brain. The countenance has put on no disguise. There is no manoeuvring with lips or actions, no suspicion or plotting in the eyes. It is simple human nature fresh from the hands of God, with all its young springs ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... in the home not only spreads out, but it climbs, and we may say that as the Hebrew family contained the beginning of government, all other authorities of this world wind up and out of the home, ascending in spiral form until the little coil ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... elaborate details of Hugh's long dying, not knowing that his work would speak to a generation which measures a man's favour with God by the oily slipperiness with which he shuffles off his clay coil. It was a case of hard dying, redoubled paroxysms, fierce fever, and bloody flux, and dreadful details. He would wear his sackcloth, and rarely change it, though it caked into knots which chafed him fiercely. ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... mighty wrong,' said Magsie. 'Come along this minute, Master Jasper, and bring wi' ye a coil o' rope and as many other strong lads as ye can find in the school. Be quick, for it is Miss Hollyhock, no less, that we are tryin' ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... of fur or feathers, so different from quadruped or bird, has a sort of humanity of aspect in its spotted and clouded nakedness. There was a humanity, dusty and sordid and as if far gone in corruption, in the sluggish coil, as it awoke suddenly into one metallic spring of pure enmity against him. Long afterwards, when it happened that at Rome he saw, a second time, a showman with his serpents, he remembered the night which had then followed, thinking, in Saint Augustine's vein, on the real ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... broiled without harm; for however the other parts of his body might be convulsed during the culinary operations, there could be no feeling of consciousness therein, the communication with the brain being cut off; but if the woman were immediately to stick a fork into his eye, skin him alive, coil him up in a skewer, head and all, so that in the extremest agony he could not move, and forthwith broil him to death: then were the same Almighty Power that formed man from the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, to ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... that I had sufficient power over its body, I removed my right hand from its neck, and in an instant drew my hunting-knife. The snake, writhing furiously again, darted at me; but, striking its body with the edge of the knife, I made a deep cut, and before it could recover its coil, I caught it again by the neck; bending its head on my knee, and again recommending myself fervently to Heaven, I cut its head from its body, throwing the head to a great distance. The blood spouted violently in my face; the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... I whip you," quoth I, "had others done as much ere this, you had been a little less evil, perchance." And I reached down a coil of small cord where it hung with divers other odds and ends. For a moment she watched me, scowling and fierce-eyed, then as I approached her with the cords in my hands, she turned on her heel with a swirl of her embroidered coat-skirts and strode away, mighty ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... where Flavia had sat by me, and conducted her to the door of her apartments. There I kissed her hand, and bade her sleep sound and wake to happy days. Then I changed my clothes and went out. Sapt and Fritz were waiting for me with six men and the horses. Over his saddle Sapt carried a long coil of rope, and both were heavily armed. I had with me a short stout cudgel and a long knife. Making a circuit, we avoided the town, and in an hour found ourselves slowly mounting the hill that led to the Castle of Zenda. The night was dark and ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... vessel crossed the bar; but it falling a dead calm, it could not proceed: they perceived this on board the Loire, and immediately dispatched a large boat to fetch the passengers out of the heat of the sun. While this boat was coming, Mr. Correard fell asleep upon a coil of cables that were on the deck of the little vessel; but before he fell quite asleep, he heard some one say, "There's one who will never get to France." The boat came in less than a quarter of an hour; all those who were about my sick friend, embarked ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 • J. B. Henry Savigny and Alexander Correard
... drawn back from her low brow into a loose coil behind, is enriched here and there with little sunny tresses, while across her forehead a few wavy locks—veritable love-locks, in Molly's case—wander idly, not as of a set purpose, but rather as though they have there drifted of ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... by the reptile. Thereafter Knowlton kept his own counsel, listening to the excited curses of the men and observing their pallor and their nervous scanning of the shadows. Jose said the screech undoubtedly was the death shriek of some animal caught and crushed in the snake's tremendous coil. McKay concurred with a nod. And when Knowlton casually said it was tough that nobody had been awake to shoot the thing as it passed the camp, Jose ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... their imperfect and perfect states, food enough to fatten many a good trout: but they are not all. See these transparent brown snails, Limneae and Succinae, climbing about the posts; and these other pretty ones, coil laid within coil as flat as a shilling, Planorbis. Many a million of these do the trout pick off the weed day by day; and no food, not even the leech, which swarms here, is more fattening. The finest trout of the high Snowdon lakes feed almost entirely on leech and snail—baits they have ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... turning to me with marked courtesy, "draw meaning or lesson from the self-entwined coil ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... heater. While the heater is no part of the pump, it is connected with it and does its work between the two horizontal check valves. Its purpose is to heat the water before it passes into the boiler. The water on its way from the pump to the boiler is forced through a coil of pipes around which the exhaust steam passes on its way from the cylinder to the exhaust nozzle ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard
... pin-vise and pliers. About 2 cm. of the proximal end of the rod should be bent in exactly the opposite direction from that of the hook so as to form a handle which will tell the position of the hook by touch as well as by sight. Coil-spring hooks for the upper-lobe-bronchus (Fig. 39) will reach around the corner into the ascending bronchus of the upper-lobe-bronchus, but the utmost skill and care are required to ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... Frenchman had lain on the floor, tied hand and foot, a gag in his mouth, and the clocks were striking two when Jack o' Judgment came back. This time he wore neither mask nor coat but over his arm he carried a coil of fine rope. Raoul watched him, fascinated, as he walked about the kitchen, whistling softly to himself, and now and again breaking into scraps ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... elements, a frozen tundra others—but there were a few items common to every emergency, and those were now at Raf's fingertips. The blast bombs, sealed into their pexilod cases, guaranteed to stop all the attackers that Terran explorers had so far met on and off worlds, a coil of rope hardly thicker than a strand of knitting yarn but of inconceivable toughness and flexibility, an aid kit with endurance drugs and pep pills which could keep a man on his feet and going long after food and water failed. He had put them ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... endless vortex of such questioning "corporals" rolled confusedly round him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself through such a coil of things will you ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... at pleasure upon the long elastic fibre that traverses the branches of the cocoanut tree. Some of these tapers are eight or ten feet in length; but being perfectly flexible, one end is held in a coil, while the other is lighted. The nut burns with a fitful bluish flame, and the oil that it contains is exhausted in about ten minutes. As one burns down, the next becomes ignited, and the ashes of the former are knocked into a cocoanut shell kept for the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... jasper and the potsherds strewing the place in search of specimens of value. On the return trip of the climbers Andy discovered an earthen jar, fifteen inches high and about twelve inches in diameter, of the "pinched-coil" type, under a sheltering rock, covered by a piece of flat stone, where it had rested for many a decade if not for a century. It contained a small coil of split-willow, such as is used in basketry, tied with cord ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... properly the coil of a rope; it then came to mean a bend, and so a corner or bay. The same phrase occurs in the 'Voyage of Maledune', v.: "and flung them in bight ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... coil, O, inserted into the lower port of the tube H H', and forced up or down in the tube by the cog wheel, M, substantially as ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... overboard; but we obeyed his last words before we looked arter him, and had a dozen irons into her afore you could 'a' said Jack Robinson! Down she went agin, pullin' the line arter her, coil on coil; but the pain wouldn't allow her to stay down long, and directly she was out agin, thrashin' the water with her flukes till it was all churned up like blubbers o'blood,—for her side was bristlin' with harpoons, and the life pourin' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... sentence was gasped out, Sim and Dick ran past, the one with a plank, the other with a coil of rope, sent by Abel to the rescue. Sir Thomas followed them at his ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... said to Worth, perched on a coil of rope beside her, "there's your country. Country your people came to a long time ago, and fought for, and some of them died for. And you'll grow up, Worth, and you'll fight for it. Not the way they fought; it won't need you to fight ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... to both of them that Wheeler came floundering along the shingle just then with a box and a coil of wire ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... humble bees, and flesh-flies, used to do so occasionally. These insects were so strong that they often ruined the web in their efforts to escape, and the spider, quite aware of the rough customers it had to deal with, would often coil a cable of many folds round them before venturing to seize them with its mandibles. It would, if the web was ruined by the struggles of the insect, deliberately gorge it, which I accounted for by supposing that unless it did so it would not be able to secrete a sufficient ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... perplexity, &c. (see uncertainty); intricacy; entanglement; cross fire; awkwardness, delicacy, ticklish card to play, knot, Gordian knot, dignus vindice nodus, net, meshes, maze; coil, &c. (see ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... to harrow the young lady's feelings by describing the scene. A few floated up and shouted out for help, but we couldn't give it, for our own raft was already loaded. Before many minutes were over, even the stoutest swimmers had sunk beneath the surface. I had got hold of an axe and a coil of rope, and we managed to lash the spars to a grating. While so employed, one of the men slipped off; as he couldn't swim, he was drowned, and thus we had more room. The sea rapidly got up, and now another of my companions was washed away, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... the partners working day and night in their enthusiasm. The apparatus was then brought to New York and gentlemen of the city were invited to the University to see it work before it left for Washington. The visitors were requested to write dispatches, and the words were sent round a three-mile coil of wire and read at the other end of the room by one who had no prior ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... progress with my work. I wind the net, coil after coil, round that bulky body. But the last smile may remain with him if my own nerves break over it. The mirror would seem to be a sort of barometer which marks my brain-pressure. Each night I have observed that it had clouded ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bunting dress, was of the color, popularly dominated "navy-blue," and the linen collar and cuffs were scarcely whiter than the round throat and wrists they encircled. The burnished auburn hair clinging in soft waves to her brow, was twisted into a heavy coil, which the long walk had shaken down till it rested almost on her neck; and though her heart beat furiously, the pale calm face might have been marble, save for the scarlet lines of her beautiful mouth, and the steady glow of the dilated pupils ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... submarines, so they watched with surprise as the under-water boat approached them. When it was quite near the shore it rose to the surface and the top parted and fell back, disclosing a boat full of armed Skeezers. At the head was the Queen, standing up in the bow and holding in one hand a coil of magic ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... reaching the ground, they attach themselves in the soil, and form new stems, which in turn, when sufficiently grown, are cut away and replaced by a subsequent growth. Such is its tenacity of life, that when the Singhalese wish to grow the rasa-kindu, they twist several yards of the stem into a coil of six or eight inches in diameter, and simply hang it on the branch of a tree, where it speedily puts forth its large heart-shaped leaves, and sends down its ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... it isn't the truth." Edna reached for her hat on the piano. She adjusted it, sticking the hat pin through the heavy coil of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... literality of Sir Richard Burton, pale before them like a mirage. The variety of scenes and images, the untiring evolution of plot, the kaleidoscopic shifting of harmonious colours, all these seem of the very essence of Arabia, and to coil directly from some bottle of a genie. Ah! what a bottle! As we whirl along in the vast and glowing ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... mere men that we are, find ourselves caught in some entanglement of our mortal coil even before we have fairly embarked upon the enterprise of thinking our case through. The art of self-reflection which appeals to us as so eminent and so human, is it after all much more than a vaporous vanity? We name its subject "human nature"; we give it a raiment of timeless ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... is proceeding with the conversion of 10-inch smoothbore guns into 8-inch rifles by lining the former with tubes of forged steel or of coil wrought iron. Fifty guns will be thus converted within the year. This, however, does not obviate the necessity of providing means for the construction of guns of the highest power both for the purposes of coast defense and for the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... his cap, and the coil of line from about his neck, where it seemed to have been placed for this very emergency, he tied the one to an end of the other and gently lowered it into the shaft. Before doing this he ordered two of the boys ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe |
